Writing on the wall

Definition
ominous warning

Example
For reasons which are not explained in the tale the Chaldean wise men are unable to read the writing on the wall, let alone interpret it. As Aramaic was written with consonants alone, they may have lacked any context in which to make sense of them. Daniel supplies vowels in two different ways, first reading the letters as nouns, then interpreting them as verbs. The words Daniel reads are monetary weights: a mena, equivalent to a Jewish mina or sixty shekes, (several ancient versions have only one mena instead of two), a tekel, equivalent to a shekel, and parsin, meaning "half-pieces". The last involves a word-play on the name of the Persians, suggesting not only that they are to inherit Belshazzar's kingdom, but that they are two peoples, Medes and Persians. Having read the words as nouns Daniel then interprets them as verbs, based on their roots: mina is interpreted as meaning "numbered", tekel, from a root meaning to weigh, as meaning "weighed" (and found wanting), and peres, the singular form of dual parsin, from a root meaning to divide, as meaning the kingdom is to be "divided" and given to the Medes and Persians. (A curious point is that the various weights — a mina or sixty shekels, another shekel, and two half-shekels — add up to 62, which is noted in the last verse as the age of Darius the Mede.)